Well this is it, listeners. After 14 years and 8 months and many thousands of questions, AMT400 is the last episode of the show. Sob!! But we’re surfing out of here on a wave of your lovely, lovely messages – as well as a British Podcast Award for hanging in there for so damn long – and some excellent questions about such things as:
sky dining – no not sky diving, sky dining
the difference between shepherding and nursing
the unreasonable popularity of Fiji Water
saving Joni Mitchell’s childhood home
destroying William Shakespeare’s final home
Barbie vs Lilli
Anish Kapoor’s expensive sculpture vs Anish Kapoor’s expensive sculpture
Swiss Barbie
the real Sherlock Holmes?!
homing pigeons
and
arsenic girl.
The songs you hear were sent in by MJ Fouldes and Hannah Ventisei. Thanks so much to all of you who sent in lovely messages – and songs! – with your AMT-related emotions and memories. We could only include a tiny fraction of your affection in the episode, but know that we read/listened to everything. And maybe wept over it all a bit, too.
You’ll hear a few more of your AMT memories, plus bonus questions and answers about reheating McDonald’s cheeseburgers, the pleasantness of trans-Atlantic crossings 250 years ago, regretting the person you chose to bequeath your children to, life drawing classes, and ruined birthdays (we’re so sorry, Beth!), in today’s Bumper Bonus Bit of Crap on the App. As it’s a special occasion, you can listen to even if you don’t own the app, by downloading here or clicking on this player:
Thanks to our sponsors:
• Manscaped, a full range of grooming products for your furry parts. Get 20% off plus free shipping with the code ANSWER at Manscaped.com.
• Squarespace. Want to build a website? Go to squarespace.com/answer, and get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code ‘ANSWER’.
Admin time:
We won’t be taking emails or phonecalls, but this website will remain up for as long as we keep remembering to renew the domain! And episodes 201-400 will sit pretty on the free feed in the pod places. Plus all our other stuff will still be available at answermethisstore.com: episodes 1-200, our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015, and our six special albums – Home Entertainment, Love, Holiday, Sports Day, Jubilee and Christmas.
Stay subscribed, because you never know what the future holds…
Good grief! Can this really be it?? THANK YOU for sending questions and feedback, commuting/exercising/falling asleep with us, and letting us be your pod friends.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT400 Child-Friendly Rating: 68%. Low-bawd but several swears. Plus an ad for ball-shavers. •••
Jingle those bells, it’s festive Answer Me This episode 392, and, as the episode contains Jesus porn, Christmas parental deceit/logistics, and swears, we’re just going to put this right here:
AMT392 Child-Friendly Rating: 1%.
Today’s inquiries include:
The Elf on the Shelf™
Christmas decorations made out of hospital supplies
the White House turkey pardon
swanky advent calendars
pen advent calendars
dog advent calendars (of and for)
the health impact of glitter
too many photo-based gifts
and
12x Jesus’s foreskin.
For more AMT festive content, there’s our Christmas album, with questions about Kwanzaa, kissing under mistletoe, and Rudolph’s red nose; and on the free feed check out AMT329 for our favourite festive friend the Shitting Log; AMT380 for candy canes, the history of eating turkey at Christmas, and artificial trees being invented in a bog brush factory; Zwarte Piet and other Santa/Father Christmas/St Nick sidekicks turn up in AMT368, and AMT328 whether you ever see pictures of Mary pregnant with Jesus; in AMT357 the fake or real snow in Home Alone 2…there’s a lot! Enough to keep you going till Twelfth Night.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for Apple and Android – we have the Tale of Two Christmas Trees.
Hear our other work:
• Helen makes The Allusionist entertainment show about language – hear the festive episodes here and the swearalong quiz here – and Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping every episode of Veronica Mars from the beginning – season 3 has begun!
• Olly hosts many podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com, including The Week Unwrapped and The Modern Mann – hear the festive episodes here.
• Martin makes music – including a new EP – which you can hear palebirdmusic.com, on the Pale Bird podcast, and on Spotify etc. You can also join him in contemplating the work of every song by Tom Waits Tom Waits in Song By Song, and he produced and composed the new kids’ science podcast Maddie’s Sound Explorers, hosted by Maddie Moate.
This episode is sponsored by:
• The Great Courses Plus, the streaming library of courses on topics from yoga to mystery fiction to formal logic to dog training. AMT listeners get a free month at thegreatcoursesplus.com/answer.
• Squarespace. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Send us your QUESTIONS, in writing or as voice recordings, to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com for us to answer in 2021! We’ll be back with AMT393 on 7 January, and there’ll be a Retro AMT episode in your feeds on 17 December.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT392 Child-Friendly Rating: 1%. As aforementioned: questions about Jesus porn, and the secret mechanics of festive mythmaking etc. •••
Filled with lights, portraits, seaside photo boards and, er, dead bodies on display, Answer Me This! Episode 383 is a very visual episode. Of audio. Rifle through your mental Google Images as you hear about topics including:
BOB the Box of Bibles
missing cats
not-missing cats
warring cats
posthumous pants
Las Vegas lights
comic foregrounds/face-in-hole boards/kaohame
portraits’ eyes
and
Jeremy Bentham’s corpse.
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows – we learn which shop was the first to offer gift vouchers. And ibuprofen! And gift certificates for ibuprofen?
Hear our other work!
Helen makes The Allusionist, an entertainment show about language, and Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping every episode of Veronica Mars from the beginning. They just completed season one.
Martin just released a bumper new album, which you can hear palebirdmusic.com, on the Pale Bird podcast, and on Spotify etc. You can also join him in contemplating the work of Tom Waits in Song By Song, which has just got to the end of Black Rider.
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Buy AMT episodes 1-200, our five special albums, and our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015 at answermethisstore.com.
We’ll be back with AMT384 on 2 April 2020, and there’ll be a Retro AMT episode in your feeds on 19 March.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT383 Child-Friendly Rating: 60%. Low in swears, but the final question in the episode is about how to say goodbye to casual hookups so, while the content itself is not explicit, it may raise some awkward queries. •••
Happy National Bagel Day Eve Eve! How are you planning to celebrate? By covering yourself in seeds and filling yourself with cream cheese? Probably just a normal day for you. Anyway, get into the NBD mood by listening to Answer Me This! Episode 370, wherein we discuss:
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – we hear about Olly’s pet fish Mr Reverend Fish.
Check in with our other work: Helen makes the entertainment show about language The Allusionist, recently featuring Susie Dent off Countdown; Olly’s show The Week Unwrapped deals with the news stories you haven’t been hearing about; and Martin the Sound Man is releasing a new song a week as part of his new 40-track mega album The Year of the Bird, complete with illustrations and diaries about each song. Get it from palebirdmusic.com.
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, with which you can easily and quickly set up a good-looking website for your projects. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
As for every episode so far and for every episode yet to come, we want your QUESTIONS: send them, in writing or as voice recordings, to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
After much speculation about the owners of the legs in The Bill in AMT366, and then MORE speculation in AMT367, in Answer Me This! Episode 368 we can at last consider the mystery SOLVED! As solved as if Hercule Poirot himself had gathered us all in the drawing room and explained every detail from knee to sole for twenty minutes. What a capper to 2018!
Also, Martin wonders about the existence of a Lou Reed Christmas song. Does ‘Xmas in February‘ count? It’s more of a namecheck of festivity than festive itself.
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – there are two kinds of fake eggs: Kinder, and aquafaba (as seen in the most recent series of GBBO). You’ve never heard someone so excited about vegan egg replacements as Martin here.
Check in with our other work: Helen makes the entertainment show about language The Allusionist; Olly hosts the magazine show The Modern Mann; and Martin the Sound Man examines the entire Tom Waits discography on Song By Song.
Thanks to today’s sponsors:
• Squarespace makes it easy to set up a good-looking website for your projects. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
• Haynes publishing is running a Secret Santa deal on its books: get Bluffer’s Guides on a multitude of subjects or the parody Haynes Explains books for £5 each at haynes.com/santa
We’ll return in the new year with new episodes, so send us your QUESTIONS: any time, deliver a voice memo or a written question by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Apologies for the unscheduled absence of a fresh episode in July, listeners: Helen’s neck had other plans for the past few weeks. But hooray, Helen is out of hospital and all new Answer Me This! Episode 364 is here! WARNING: there’s a bit of Medical Stuff in the first few minutes of this episode, so if you’re sensitive to that, skip to the 4-minute mark, after which you can hear about:
Paw Patrol vs the football World Cup
post-swim communal shower etiquette
cosmetology Cast Away
jesters’ staffs
cranberry farming
lost birthday presents Bram Stoker’s Dracula
and
an inflated bladder on a stick.
There is more cranberry-chat in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices. We discover a previous, more ferocious name for the fruit, and reminisce about The Delia Effect (not a euphemism for a UTI or the soothing thereof with cranberry juice).
Check in with our other work: Olly hosts The Modern Mann; and Helen and Martin are performing the Allusionist live show on stages in the UK, Ireland, the US and Canada this autumn – check where and when at theallusionist.org/events.
Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the show, and for making it so easy to set up a good-looking website for your projects. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
The Bluffers’ Guides are back! Rapidly become passingly well-informed in subjects from cats to fishing to social media to wine at bluffers.com.
Send us your QUESTIONS: any time, deliver a voice memo or a written question by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. You can still use the old ways of calling the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, but a lot of those messages haven’t been reaching us lately. So emailing a voice memo is the safer bet.
Upon the last Winter Olympics in 2014, we fair shat ourselves with surprise and delight when Lizzy Yarnold, who won gold for Team GB in the skeleton, listens to AMT! She’s competing again this time, so GOOD LUCK, Lizzy. Do it for all of us who get most of our exercise running for the ice cream van.
People of all athletic abilities, Olympian or not: get ready to race through Answer Me This! Episode 359, to learn about:
pope tropes
hotel toothpaste
chewing toothpicks
your auntie’s Facebook pic Dave Claus The Santa Dave
Defence Against the Dark Arts
Dumbledore’s aptitude for HR
the Center Parcs trees
the Center Parcs dome
the Center Parcs soft play that’s located in the bar/the Center Parcs bar that’s located in the soft play
karakia
cocktail swords
buttermilk
butterfat
and
globules.
Plus: we hear the latest in Olly’s gold pen nightmare scenario #OllyMannProblems; Martin figures out his title for when, as a Son of Santa, he inevitably takes up Santa duties; and Helen is already running down the beach to go swimming with some snazzy fish, so SEE YA.
The conversation about advance ticket-buying continues in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – as Olly wonders whether his son, aged 2, will be too sophisticated to enjoy the Teletubbies live on the stages of Hertfordshire..
Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the show, and for making it so easy to set up a good-looking website for your business, store, restaurant, art portfolio, band, podcast, smug travel wankery, etc. Have a go during the two-week free trial, then get 10% off Squarespace’s website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year with the discount code ‘answer‘.
You can also get two free Audible audiobooks if you go to answermethispodcast.com/audible. Two free audiobooks are better than one free audiobook which is better than no free audiobooks, so get yourself free audiobooks!
Send us your QUESTIONS: deliver a voice memo or a written question by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. You can still use the old ways of calling the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, but a lot of those messages haven’t been reaching us lately or are coming out sounding like you’ve just been eaten by a robot. So a voice memo is a safer bet.
It’s AMT’s 11th birthday! To celebrate, we can’t replicate how Olly spent his own 11th birthday, at Cody’s Tex-Mex restaurant in Stevenage, because it closed down. So instead we’ve made some mild-to-moderate life changes – hear all about them Answer Me This! Episode 358, in which we also consider:
Nicole Scherzinger’s rancid yoghurt-nose
chutney WHY WHY WHY
goldfish as gifts
glass coffins
dairy for ditzes
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Forty Dragons
Goldilocks and the Three Bears Scant Plot
the price of gold pens
jamnesty
kalettes
piranha ribs
hot tubs vs hot pot
and
Olly Mannhood.
Should we be flattered that some of you have named your sexy body parts after us? Is it some kind of ultra-effective contraceptive? Because if you need a libido-killer, you’ve really invented a great one.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – contains some listener suggestions for David who complained in episode 355 that strangers won’t leave him alone because his dog is too cute. David should have looked for tips in the documentary about the making of Moonwalker! It’s OBVIOUS!
You still have a couple of weeks to get our most recent Retro AMT, the Best of 2010 part 1 – a good year! For AMT japes, anyway. All our Best Of compilations, as well as episodes 1-200 and our five special albums, are available to buy from the AMT store.
Thanks to today’s sponsors: first direct, whose online banking services you can find at firstdirect.com; and those stalwarts of podcast support Squarespace. Have a go during the two-week free trial, then get 10% off Squarespace’s website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Send us your QUESTIONS for AMT in 2018: send us a voice memo or a written question by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. You can still use the old ways of calling the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, but a lot of those messages haven’t been reaching us lately, and we hate to think of your intriguing witty questions being lost to us.
We’ll be back with AMT359 on 1 February 2018, and with a Retro AMT episode on 18 January. And if you’re in or near San Francisco on 12 January, get a ticket HERE to see Helen and Martin at SF Sketchfest.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT358 Child-Friendly Rating: 38%. Mostly ok, but the question about naming your genitals after us might traumatise your innocent offspring forever. •••
There’s MAGIC! all over Answer Me This! Episode 354: how to MAGICALLY transform a banana into a sliced banana, how to MAGICALLY turn an egg into an egg IN A BOTTLE, and how to MAGICALLY turn an adolescent boy into a hit with the ladies. We also learn about:
Plus: Olly recaps the origins of his lifelong feud with Wales; Helen does not want to learn magic tricks to break the ice at parties (also does not want to go to parties); and Martin the Sound Man can be found behind a veil of steam rising from a Szechuan hotpot.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – we learn what it takes to make Olly crack up on air: hepatitis.
Want to hear more from us? There’s the retro AMT episode we lob into your feed mid-month – right now you can hear the crowd favourite AMT186, containing the last known sighting of Owl City; to get it, subscribe to AMT on your podcatcher of choice. All of our back catalogue is available from answermethisstore.com, along with our special albums.
Thank you very much, thank you very very very much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode, and for making spiffy websites so easy to build. Do as Martin did: play around during the two-week free trial, then get 10% off Squarespace’s website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Ever worried that if you donate blood, someone might have it transfused into their body then incriminate you in their crime? No, us neither, but one questioneer is concerned. Hear his fear in Answer Me This! Episode 343, as well as:
Plus: Olly concocts a brilliant/ridiculous Jonathan Creek plot;
Helen misses working as a barmaidbartender, even if she was effectively a parody of the role; and Martin the Sound Man would like you to bring him flowers, please.
The Mann family firearm features in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App. Get the app for your iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices.
Thanks to our friends at Squarespace.com for sponsoring this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year if you use the discount code ‘answer‘.
Who let the dogs out? And who got the dogs stoned? We address these very important canine questions in Answer Me This! Episode 335, along with others more about:
Lego love, lost
wedding gambling
Soda Stream vs Nutribullet
pissing dolls vs pissing Elmo
theatre-adjacent Italian restaurants
the Crystal Palace pizza district
Tony Awards for Tonys
Oscar Isaac
Oscar Hammerstein II
and
Oscar seatfillers.
Plus: Olly is DONE with Star Wars, so don’t even bother; Helen is waiting for the Emmys to introduce a podcasting category; and Martin the Sound Man could improve his gifting game.
Need something to ease you off the thrill of the Wimblesport, or hype you up for the imminent Olympics? Try the AMT Sports Day album from answermethisstore.com, where you can also purchase our other albums and episodes 1-200 – including AMTs 186 and 187 for the full Owl City experience by proxy. And remember to get your free audiobook at answermethispodcast.com/audible.
The album features a whole hour of love, sex, dating and genitals, and it’s all completely new AMT material that has never appeared on the podcast. Such as:
♥ Is it appropriate to buy sexy clothes for your mum? ♥ How do you make putting on a condom fun? ♥ Just what is in that liquid squirting out of your girlfriend? ♥ When you’ve lost your engagement ring, how best to style it out? ♥ Is your partner’s schoolgirl fetish something you should worry about? It’s not like he’s a teacher – oh, he is? Oh. ♥ How do you set up a blind date when you’re a blind dater? ♥ How can anyone feel horny at the prospect of a vagina bristling with sharp, spiky horns? ♥ What’s the best point of a wedding ceremony to call it off? ♥ How do they come up with all those lines on Take Me Out? ♥ What is your exhibitionist housemate really trying to show you? ♥ How many holes should there be in a penis?
Here’s a little preview:
Any further questions?
♥ Is this album suitable for me if I’m not at all in the mood for love, sex, or interacting with humanity at all? YES. If all these people were having such a great time, they wouldn’t be writing to us, would they?
♥ Is this album child-friendly? HELL NO.
♥ Will this album teach me what it’s like to have the Olly Mann Valentine’s Experience? YES.
♥ Will Helen say the word ‘urethra’ so many times, I will feel a bit sick? MAYBE.
You can get it from iTunes and Amazon, but if you want all of your money to go to us and none to Megacorp, buy it directly from the AMT Store.
Answer Me This! Podcast 